1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates generally to the field of information handling systems. More specifically, but with limitation, the disclosure relates to electronic transactions between businesses.
2. Background Information
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is an information handling system. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for such systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Business to business (b2b) electronic transactions may be one of the many uses for information handling systems (IHSs). By utilizing IHSs for b2b transactions, businesses may quickly and efficiently conduct electronic transactions with each other, such as sending purchase orders, providing invoices, and performing other business transactions. One of the fundamental problems in integrating b2b electronic transactions for trading partners is the fact that different trading partners may use different procurement and applications to manage b2b transactions. For instance, while trading partners may be using industry standard extensible markup language (XML), xCBL (Common Business Library), hypertext markup language (HTML), electronic data interchange (EDI) message, and other suitable formats to communicate data with each other, the data may be stored by the trading partners in a different fashion. In some cases, a trading partner may format information in a different manner or may utilize identification (ID) codes for product and/or customer related data. For example, a buyer may format a phone number differently than a supplier or may provide an ID code for a delivery address instead of the actual address.
In order for businesses to manage b2b transactions with a trading partner when different procurement or applications are used, the business may need to perform trading partner specific transformations, data mapping, and data cross referencing to convert data into a format desired by the business or a specific trading partner. While b2b servers, such as BizTalk and webMethods, may provide infrastructure to perform these operations, in some situations, b2b servers may not allow trading partner specific operations to be performed without making universal changes to the operations for all trading partners. As a result, a trading partner's sales and deployment teams may request that other trading partner make changes to their method of supplying electronic transactions or may manually process electronic transactions from the buyer, which could potentially cause the trading partner to lose customers.
Thus, a need exists for methods and media for decoupling orchestration and mapping processes in b2b servers, which may allow the execution of trading partner specific custom and library maps with optional cross referencing data.